The Influences Of Ethical Leadership On Group Ethical Decision-Making

Nowadays,it is quite common to see business ethical scandals in newspapers,so the study of business ethical decision-making becomes increasingly important.Traditionally,researchers aim to study the business ethical decision-making from an individual perspective;however,most decisions are made by groups instead of individuals.To help fill the gap,this study explores the influence of ethical leadership on group ethical decision-making from an information sampling model perspective.Generally,previous researchers like to see the ethical leadership as a unidimensional concept,but its theoretical states argue that the ethical leadership is the synthesis of the moral person and the moral manager.There are also some empirical studies that find the scale of ethical leadership can be divided into two dimensions.Maybe it is time to go back to the theoretical basis of the ethical leadership.Based on the DISCUSS model,which was derived from the information sampling model,I use Python 2.7 to write a program to simulate the decision process of a group.This study use 3×2 experimental design to explore the influence of ethical leadership on group ethical decision-making.The two factors are leadership style(moral person vs.moral manager vs.ethical leadership)and group style(advocacy vs.nonadvocacy),and this study mainly focuses on the influences of leadership style.Every experimental treatment contains 300 groups.Due to the statemate of a group,I finally get 1799 sets of data.The results indicate that ethical leadership can promote the groups to get more ethical decisions,and the main contribution is given by moral manager dimension.Comparing to moral person dimension,the moral manager can facilitate the information flow in the group,while moral person cannot.A mediation analysis also reveals that the ratio of ethical information discussed in groups mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and group ethical decision-making.Simultaneously,I compare the results of advocacy groups and nonadvocacy groups;despite its weak effect size,the difference is significant.The main contribution of this study is that it illustrates the influences of ethical leadership on group ethical decision-making from an information sampling model perspective,which can help us to understand the ethical leadership and group ethical decision-making deeply.Some limitations of the computer simulation are discussed in this paper,which may have some implications for future researchers who use computer simulation method.At last,based on the results of this study,I give some suggestions for the future researchers in this area as well as giving some practical suggestions for managers.